The epistemology of this stuff is so…horrendous.

Pink News: A transgender 4-year-old is transitioning before kindergarten.

Oh come on – what sense does that even make? What does “transitioning” mean for a 4-year-old? How can the parents possibly know the kid is “transgender”?

They will be the youngest person to transition openly in Australia, and will be settled in their new gender by the time they go to to school next year.

Despite the decision having been taken by the child’s parents to respect the child’s wishes to transition, and the opinions of gender specialist medical professionals, some have suggested that the child is “too young”.

What sense does it make to talk about the parents “respecting the child’s wishes to transition”? Children of 4 don’t speak Gender Politics. Children of 4 are not yet completely up to speed in the skill of distinguishing fantasy from reality.

Speaking to the Telegraph, clinical psychologist Michael Carr-Gregg said there is a clear difference between children who experiment with dressing up, for example, and those who experience gender dysphoria.

He said there is a “huge difference between dress-ups and a child believing with every fibre of their being they are in the wrong body.”

A child age four? I don’t believe it. I don’t believe there is any such “huge” difference. For a psychologist, Carr-Gregg seems to have a very naïve  confidence that he can tell when a child believes X “with every fibre of their being.” News flash: nobody can tell that for sure about anybody. Basic epistemology: we can never know for sure what other people believe. Never.

The first comment demonstrates how horrifyingly regressive the ideology can get.

Let me explain what transitioning involves for a 4 year old.

For a boy, he goes to the barber and gets his hair cut short, takes maybe 5 minutes plus queuing time and time to get there and back. For a girl, she doesn’t go to the barber and grows her hair out. That might take about 6 months.

For all genders, parents go shopping and buy more appropriate clothes and toys. That takes a few hours.

Fucking hell – more “appropriate” clothes and toys. There is no such thing! Especially for four-year-olds! Except in the sense that children that young need clothes to play in more than clothes to sit still in. But the appropriate toys for children are ones they like, ones that will be fun and interesting and inspiring and broadly educational. Boys should have dolls and Lego, girls should have dolls and Lego.

This shit is not progressive, in any way. Rigid confining gender rules are not progressive, in any way.

Here we go again. Saudi Arabia has sentenced a man to ten years in prison and 2,000 lashes for talking atheism on Twitter.

The 28-year-old reportedly refused to repent, insisting what he wrote reflected his beliefs and that he had the right to express them.

The hardline Islamic state’s religious police in charge of monitoring social networks found more than 600 tweets denying the existence of God, ridiculing Koranic verses, accusing all prophets of lies and saying their teaching fuelled hostilities.

So Saudi Arabia decided to demonstrate that the teaching of prophets does not fuel hostilities by sentencing a guy to ten years in prison, a huge fine, and 2,000 lashes for talking atheism on Twitter.

From our friend Pliny:

Reasonable woman: Do you ever wonder if you had, say, built low income housing for “our sins” instead of the martyrdom thing, whether your modern followers would have such a whiny-assed persecution complex?

Jesus and Spooky: Hey, needless suffering is our schtick.

Purvi Patel is out of prison.

A superior court judge in Indiana on Wednesday ordered the immediate release of Purvi Patel, the Indiana woman who was convicted of “feticide” and sentenced to 20 years in prison in 2015 for losing her pregnancy, after resentencing Patel to less time than she has already served.

After Patel appealed the original sentence, her feticide conviction was vacated by an appeals court in July. She was still found guilty of a class D felony charge of child neglect.

In her ruling Wednesday, St. Joseph superior court judge Elizabeth Hurley “said a sentence of 18 months for Purvi Patel was appropriate for a felony charge of neglect of a dependent and that Patel does not have to be placed on parole,” the Guardian reported.

“Child neglect”? There was no child.

While many reproductive rights advocates celebrated the overturning of the feticide conviction, they are also disturbed that Patel remains charged with child neglect.

As the National Network of Abortion Funds wrote last month: “While vacating the feticide charge has been the hopeful focus of the outcome for many, the felony class D, with a sentence of 180 days to six years, sends a mixed message that doesn’t yet restore the relationship between doctors and patients.”

“If pregnant people women fear criminal consequences, they don’t go to the doctor,” said Shelly Dodson, director of All-Options Pregnancy Resource Center in Bloomington, Indiana. “Indiana is setting a dangerous precedent not to trust the medical community. Choosing to criminalize people women around pregnancy decisions and pregnancy outcomes is a grave injustice, which is just as true for anti-abortion laws like HB 1337 as it is for Purvi Patel.”

Women, you damn fool. If it were people the laws wouldn’t be like this. It’s only women who get pushed around this way, and they get pushed around this way because they’re women. Women get pregnant, and that makes all women public property subject to stringent property laws.

At any rate it’s good that Purvi Patel is out of the slammer.

Yes please.

The paradox of the US – so rich, yet so third world by so many measures – like maternal mortality for instance. With all our piles of cash, we suck at keeping poor women alive throughout pregnancy and delivery. How shameful that is. We’d rather spend the piles of cash on making sure that rich people can buy all the houses they want than on good healthcare for all.

The good news is that maternal mortality rates are declining worldwide. The bad news? The situation for women in the United States is a glaring exception. And in Texas, where clinics serving women have shuttered and their health interests have been battled all the way up to the US Supreme Court, the rate of pregnancy-related deaths more than doubled over the course of two years.

These are some of the findings in a new study (PDF) in the September issue of Obstetrics & Gynecology. The authors set out to analyze maternal mortality trends in part because the United States government has not published official data on this subject since 2007, they said, calling that fact an “international embarrassment.”

Why yes, that is an embarrassment. Shame on us.

The United States performs worse than any other developed nation when it comes to maternal death, according to State of the World’s Mothers 2015, the most recent comprehensive report compiled by Save the Children, a 90-year old global organization advocating for kids’ needs.

That’s what I mean. Worse than any other developed nation. That’s shameful.

And Texas is the standout.

From 2006 through 2010, numbers from the National Center for Health Statistics show that the rate of maternal deaths in Texas wavered little. There were as few as 69 deaths in 2009 and as many as 82 in 2008. But from 2010 to 2012, those numbers shot up from 72 deaths to 148. In 2013, deaths fell slightly to 140, and there were 135 in 2014, the last year analyzed by the study’s researchers.

Advocates for reproductive rights — including the right to legal and safe abortions — were quick to seize upon the news with their analysis about the trend in Texas.

The uptick is no coincidence, they say. In this same window of time, Texas politicians voted to defund Planned Parenthood and slashed family planning dollars, reducing access to more than abortions. Other services provided by Planned Parenthood, which often caters to underserved communities, include breast and cervical cancer screenings, contraceptive counseling, STD testing and treatment, and multiple forms of preventive women’s care.

“For many of our patients, Planned Parenthood and other family planning clinics are their gateway to the health care system,” said Sarah Wheat, chief external affairs officer for Planned Parenthood of Greater Texas, in a written statement. “Women have been left out in the cold, without being able to obtain regular healthcare screenings, or birth control to space their pregnancies, and delays in their initial pregnancy test and prenatal referral — all of which are harmful to women’s health.”

But Texas is only the worst.

Of 183 countries and territories studied from 1990 to 2013, only 17 saw maternal mortality rate percentage increases, the World Health Organization report “Trends in Maternal Mortality: 1990 to 2013” showed. In the United States, the maternal mortality rate grew by 136% over those 23 years, more than any other country studied.

More than any other country studied.

Leo Igwe tells us:

A victim of witchcraft accusation and witchcraft related violence in KENYA NEEDS YOUR HELP!

A 24-year-old woman is fighting for her life at Maua Methodist Hospital in Meru after her hand was chopped off and her private parts bruised after she was accused of witchcraft.

Mercy Nyoroka was assaulted for allegedly bewitching her neighbour and child at Kathelwa area, Igembe Central Sub County.—–

They later brought her back to her kitchen with deep wounds on her head and private parts. Her hand was also chopped off.

Richard Ntoiti, the victim’s husband, says he had gone to buy milk when his wife was abducted by the attackers.

Ntoiti, who is a casual labourer, is now appealing for help to cater for his wife’s treatment.

Purple Sage has a post on a new “Safer Sex” guide for trans people. Read it all; I want to share a couple of her points here.

The guide begins by defining some terms:

“We, as trans people, use a variety of words to describe our gender and our body parts, and these words can be very unique and personal. There’s no one right way to refer to our bodies, but to keep things consistent in this guide, we’ve decided to use the following words in the following ways.

…

PARTS: We use this word when we’re talking about genitals or sexual anatomy of any kind.

DICK: We use this word to describe external genitals. Dicks come in all shapes and sizes and can belong to people of all genders.

FRONT HOLE: We use this word to talk about internal genitals, sometimes referred to as a vagina. A front hole may self-lubricate, depending on age and hormones.

STRAPLESS: We use this word to describe the genitals of trans women who have not had genital reconstruction (or “bottom surgery”), sometimes referred to as a penis.

VAGINA: We use this word to talk about the genitals of trans women who have had bottom surgery.

See what they did there? Women have “front holes” but trans women have vaginas.

Is that, finally, obvious enough misogyny that people will get it?

Then there’s some very creepy shit about “transactional sex” which is what they call prostitution.

This guide talks about consent, which is good, but look how they throw in a sentence about “transactional sex.”

“Consent is the enthusiastic, mutual and voluntary agreement to do whatever activity you’re discussing. Giving consent is an ongoing process: You always have the right to say “yes” or “no” to any sexual activity regardless of whether you’ve done it before, whether you know your partner really likes it or whether you’re in the middle of doing it. We also recognize that transactional sex complicates consent. If at any point you change your mind about doing something, you should say so and your partner needs to stop.”

And johns always stop when the sex worker changes her mind, as is well known. There is no violence in the “transactional sex” industry, however much transactional sex complicates consent. And I’m Marie of Rumania.

In their section on communication, they talk about “transactional sex” again:

“We recognize that communication can be complicated with transactional sex partners. In some cases, the recognition of the sex transaction can actually help frame sexual negotiation, but power and control dynamics can also make this more challenging. Hopefully, ongoing communication can help us have sexual experiences where we all feel safe and respected.”

Hopefully! Yeah! Let’s hope so! Let’s just keep hoping so forever, while the johns beat up the sex workers and nobody gives a damn. Hopefully all that will stop one of these days.

And then there’s the BDSM part, but I’ll let Purple Sage tell you about the knives and blades and what she thinks the correct advice is. (Spoiler: don’t use them.)

Yes! The FDA has banned anti-bacterial soaps.

Antibacterial soaps were banned from the US market on Friday in a final ruling by the Food and Drug Administration, which said that manufacturers had failed to prove the cleansers were safe or more effective than normal products.

Dr Janet Woodcock, director of the FDA’s center for evaluation and research, said that certain antimicrobial soaps may not actually serve any health benefits at all.

“Consumers may think antibacterial washes are more effective at preventing the spread of germs, but we have no scientific evidence that they are any better than plain soap and water,” she said in a statement. “In fact, some data suggests that antibacterial ingredients may do more harm than good over the long term.”

Let me guess – they may do more harm over the long term for the same reason overuse of antibiotics does: the bacteria evolve to withstand the soaps, so then they’re that much harder to get rid of.

The FDA first proposed a rule about the chemicals in 2013, following research that they might affect human hormones or change natural resistance to bacteria. The agency requested research from the producers to back up their health claims, but in the three years since has found that data lacking or their requests ignored.

Triclosan has been proven effective at killing bacteria if used at sustained length – far longer than the few seconds most people spend washing their hands – and was once only found in healthcare settings.

Recent studies have linked triclosan to a series of disruptions in human and animal health. A University of Chicago study released in July found that triclosan changed the microbiome inside human guts, and its researchers suggested that exposure could damage developing fetuses. A study from earlier this year found that overuse could also be contributing to antibiotic resistance, and a 2015 studyfound that antibacterial formulas were not more effective than soap and water.

So if they’re not more effective, it’s a really bad idea to use then when they could be contributing to antibiotic resistance, eh?

Professor Patrick McNamara, who has published research on antimicrobial soaps, called the ruling “logical” because research shows “there is no added benefit to having these antimicrobial chemicals in soaps”.

He added that triclosan could play a part in driving antibiotic resistance, saying, “after these chemicals are used in our homes they go down the drain to wastewater treatment plants and eventually to the environment where they can select for antibiotic resistance genes”.

“In short, triclosan and triclocarbon present a risk towards propagation of antibiotic resistance,” he said. “Since they do not offer added benefits when washing hands, their use is not worth their environmental risk.”

Thank you FDA.